According to a few basic guidelines, you will ensure that you stay fit and healthy, that your baby is safe and comfortable, and that you return
According to a few basic guidelines, you will ensure that you stay fit and healthy, that your baby is safe and comfortable, and that you return to enjoy your running and sport once your baby has arrived, physio Mark Buckingham advises.
The First Trimester
On the whole, you should be able to practice normally during the first trimester, or three months. The issues will be the fatigue that you experience between the tiredness of training and a baby growing. There is some evidence that Relaxin is elevated during this period but their innate intensity seems to make this peak a non-event in my experience with pregnant athletes.
Also, treatment is recommended by the end of the trimester, for some lower back and pelvis problems. Relaxin's beneficial impact, however, is that it encourages tissue healing so that those continuing niggles that get good news.
Most women at this time continue their work and sportive lives as usual. The only possible change will be that in a few months there won't be the strength of building for a particular event. And, although the burden is less, there is a lot to be learned by focusing on technique and control research that will sit for the future in the memory bank.
The Second trimester
The second trimester is when the growing baby will face more obvious problems of exhaustion, weight gain, swollen ankles, and altered core control and location. It is during this time that you need to begin to change your preparation.
The main threat comes from high impact, explosive incidents. Running may be included in this but especially long jumping and hurdles or activities requiring massive trunk rotation such as high jumping, throws, or tennis and squash. When you're looking at obstacle courses you'll need to think about how much the course affects.
When the stomach swells the ability to do these motions safely can diminish and chances of stress on the baby are rising. Obviously, this is unique to event/sport and while some athletes continue to practice well during this time, it appears to be at an even lower level.
Hear out your body
The biggest challenge here is the mind. A keen athlete who has already been in charge of her body following injury will find such uncontrollable adjustments challenging to handle. A mental approach is essential to this and you just need to embrace and accept the transition, rather than fight it. Pregnancy and its changes are all for the good and you and your baby are obviously dangerous with the belief that you should counter it or 'not let it affect me.'
Both those emotions will be felt by the average woman who runs or plays sport and each will have their own cut off point. There is no time to slow down or interrupt the action, right or wrong. But listening to your own body frankly is vitally necessary, and not trying to make yourself do what you think you should. A safe, sensible solution is something like a really good runner who said she'd found running too difficult (and slow!) recently, so she stopped – 'What was the point? 'She was able to swim and walk well, so she did that.
The Third trimester
It's really the third trimester that the biggest changes take place and it will become clear to you during this period that nothing more than easy running, cross-training, and conditioning work is a risk that is not worth taking. The question you have to ask is "why am I doing this? Is it advantageous from a conditioning perspective, or is it just training for the sake of training? "If you just go through the motions, you do something because you believe you should, not because you're gaining something. Avoid it, then!
The end of the third trimester is when the Relaxin hormone, which makes the ligaments lose and stretchy, really kicks in to help deliver the infant. It is these hormones that pose the greatest risk to you and your body in the long term. They make impact research more likely to adversely affect areas such as the feet and particularly the pelvis.
The lower back and the pelvis
Three fibrous links bind the pelvis together. Relaxin functions during transmission to stretch out the fibrous ligaments around these joints. This loss of pelvis stability leads to pain, and the sacroiliac joints are more likely to shift and become dysfunctional with repeated impacts. Further, due to the baby's weight, the forward inclination of the pelvis makes this change more likely to occur. The lumbar spine is arched to its 'end of space' with this forward turn, and is cramped and painful. During pregnancy, about 1 in 5 females will experience low back pain and/or pelvic pain.
There is something that can be done to improve it but the first thing to do is to stop all things that cause pain! Many women, too, will point to their work and time on their feet as a problem. Recent evidence shows that individualized core strength and endurance training along with manual therapy from physiotherapy performed in pregnant women and strong adherence to medication has the greatest impact on pain and the ability to work as usual. This method was considered most useful by over 70 percent of women.
It has also been shown that the use of good quality support belts for the pelvis and the bump is successful but they have to be more than a storage.
Feet in the pregnancy
Ladies also found that Relaxin caused their feet to expand and flatten. Just use good supportive trainers and avoid flip flops or sandals during your pregnancy and particularly throughout the third trimester to maintain as much of the foot structure 's integrity as possible.
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